Why IOSM?
More Effective Leaders and a Healthier, Higher-Performing Workforce
Human Capabilities for Leadership and Work
Organizational performance ultimately rests on three foundational human capabilities: individual wellbeing, cognitive performance, and emotional intelligence. Together, these determine how we think, regulate emotion, sustain effort, and relate effectively under pressure.
These capabilities are not fixed traits. They are trainable neural skills—and they represent a decisive advantage in a turbulent, AI-adopting marketplace.
The Institute for Organizational Science and Mind (IOSM) was created to advance the science, practice, and application of neural training to develop more effective leaders, teams and organizations.
We embrace all-secular modern mindfulness as a foundational, proven method within this discipline—but it is only one part of a broader, all-science approach to strengthening how the human brain functions at work.
When human mental and emotional capabilities are developed systematically, organizations see stronger cultures, higher engagement, increased creativity and innovation, and improved quality, performance and productivity.
“At the heart of our most intractable business problems, we find people problems: chronic stress and burnout, interpersonal conflict, miscommunication, poor decision-making, and more. We waste massive amounts of money, time, energy, and resources trying to fix these issues, yet the true costs are much larger than we know.”
Thompson et al, Harvard Business Review, 2016
More Effective Leaders
For leaders, neural training is a force multiplier. It develops and strengthens networks that shape leadership behaviors under pressure.
Research confirms improvements in self-regulation, emotional intelligence, authenticity, presence, trustworthiness, adaptability, and more. At the same time, leaders experience measurable gains in cognitive performance — including greater awareness, attention control, creativity, adaptability, critical thinking, and decision quality.
Rather than teaching facts about these states, traits, and behaviors, neural training develops the capabilities themselves through experiential, procedural methods—so important leadership behaviors emerge naturally, even in complex or high-stakes conditions.
A Higher-Performing Workforce
Workforce dissatisfaction, disengagement, and burnout are at record levels. Despite decades of wellness programs, apps, and incentives, employees continue to report declining energy, motivation, emotional distress and exhaustion. The issue is not a lack of resources—it is the mismatch between modern workplace demands and the brain’s capacity to handle constant stress, anxiety, ambiguity, and disruption.
Most organizational interventions provide temporary relief for symptoms, but they’re clearly not able to change ingrained mindsets, thoughts, or behavioral habits. Our human emotions are neural patterns that are trained, often below the level of our awareness, to express a positive world view, curiosity and engagement — or emotional fear, anxiety, and self-limiting beliefs. These patterns aren’t changed by information or intermittent encouragement — they can only be retrained through procedural neural training.
Meaningful improvement occurs when we strengthen the neural systems responsible for self-awareness, emotional regulation, mental strength, and resilience. This is the root-level work that enables individuals to think more clearly, recover more effectively, and operate with greater stability under pressure—and is the foundation for purposeful motivation and engagement with life and work
A More Productive and Sustainable Workplace
IOSM offers new science and solutions for improving human performance, while reducing workplace toxicity — the erosive result of chronic stress and burnout, attention deficit, negative mindsets, bias, conflict, and the mental and emotional toll of constant, disruptive VUCA change and uncertainty.
Reversing these human challenges across the workforce is a path to major savings, including lower healthcare costs, reduced absenteeism, less turnover, and fewer safety incidents. On the upside, the impact of even a modest rise in productivity, improvement in quality, or gain in customer experience triggers a positive and rapidly compounding cycle of higher revenue, lower operating costs, and more durable financial performance.
Teaching our people to effectively manage their own stress, awareness, attention, emotional intelligence, and mindset through neural training—not through a voluntary mindfulness perk, but as a disciplined business requirement—is an empowering win-win.
Our people are developing essential human skills that impact every facet of their lives. The organization benefits when those healthier, happier, more purposeful, and engaged contributors bring those skills to the workplace, directly impacting our productivity and bottom line.
.jpg)
We must learn and teach others to self-manage stress and burnout, increase focus and concentration, adapt to change and uncertainty, and activate emotional intelligence. As AI commoditizes information and technologies, these uniquely human skills will be increasingly central to competitive advantage.
FAQ
Why IOSM?
IOSM is a professional association and learning platform dedicated to advancing secular, scientific, evidence-based neural training in leadership, workforce, and organizational development. We offer research, community, and education for high-performing leaders, coaches and educators who recognize that the next frontier of performance is not in learning to work harder, but in training the human brain more effectively.
What is the human skills gap?
A central challenge in modern work is the widening gap between the human capabilities organizations need and those their people are trained to deliver. As work becomes faster, more complex, and increasingly shaped by AI, performance depends increasingly on mental and emotional skills that can't be trained through traditional explicit learning.
Why can't conventional training close the gap?
Public education, conventional providers, and corporate learning teach technical and functional skills using explicit learning methodologies. But mental and emotional skills – attention control, emotional intelligence, mental strength, and resilience – can only be learned through procedural experience that directly trains our neural networks.
Why is neural training essential to workplace mental health?
Our wellness and engagement interventions, from mindfulness apps to recognition programs, haven't moved the needle on mental health. Our people are reporting record dissatisfaction, disengagement, and burnout at work. Neural training goes beyond treating the symptoms to retrain the neural networks that create wellbeing, engagement, and resilience.
How is mindfulness connected to neural training?
Mindfulness is an effective series of neural practices that can greatly improve human wellbeing, cognitive performance, and emotional intelligence. Yet, neuroscience is confirming that it is only one solution in a broader set of science-based practices. These include cognitive, emotional, attentional, and somatic methods that directly strengthen neural pathways involved in performance and wellbeing.
Why should organizations adopt neural training?
AI disruption, VUCA challenges, and an increasingly disengaged workforce are straining traditional approaches to productivity and performance. Neural training changes the game by developing uniquely human skills for wellbeing, cognitive performance, and emotional intelligence that are essential to work, but not easily automatable.
What outcomes can leaders expect from neural training?
Research shows measurable improvements in self-awareness, attention control, emotional regulation, presence, empathy, critical and strategic thinking, adaptability, decision quality, and overall leadership effectiveness. These changes emerge through procedural learning as durable, default patterns of thought and behavior.
How can neural training improve the workplace?
Neural training develops mental and emotional skills for managing stress, anxiety, overload, distraction, disengagement, conflict, and burnout. These skills create stronger, more positive cultures, more effective leadership, a healthier, higher performing workforce, and a safer, more productive workplace.
How does neural training improve organizational performance?
Organizations that develop positive mental and emotional capabilities see stronger cultures, lower turnover, better collaboration, fewer safety incidents, greater innovation, higher quality, and greater productivity.
Are the outcomes of neural training supported by research?
Yes. Neuroplasticity, training practices, and outcomes are all well supported through cognitive science, behavioral science, psychology, and evidence-based mindfulness research. The methods strengthen specific neural networks that support high-level cognitive and emotional functioning.
Why choose IOSM as a training and development partner?
IOSM focuses on a single mission: advancing secular, scientific, evidence-based neural training for leadership, workforce development, and organizational practice. The institute connects research, education, community, and practice—and translates the most current research, ideas, and insights into practical solutions for more effective leadership and work.
Why choose IOSM as a professional resource?
IOSM is a clearinghouse for existing and new research – and a community learning platform for executives, operating leaders, HR/OD professionals, coaches, and educators seeking new science-based solutions and skills for the workplace. Our focus is squarely on the intersection of neuroscience, leadership, workforce, and organizational development.